A Typical Development Scenario

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In most scenarios, mobile and wireless data capture application development begins through a business analysis workshop (BAW) where your specific process flows, business rules and project objectives are clearly defined. RFgen’s Programmers Assistant greatly assists developers in this process by providing easy-to-access information regarding various enterprise business objects based upon the connectivity options selected. Further, using our built-in screen designer, developers can quickly develop functional prototypes of mobile device screens by simply “painting” the prompts in Programmers Assistant.

Once this is accomplished, users can then move to establish multiple presentation views of the user interface to support the various screen sizes, languages or role-based views of information that will be used during deployment. Regardless of the screen sizes and/or devices used, Programmers Assistant requires only a single set of business rules be maintained, with support for additional screen sizes or languages being quickly enabled without any duplication of business logic.

Next, additional functional and behavioral requirements are configured in the application to support operations like enterprise data search, data validation, input mode selection (keyboard, barcode scanner, speech / voice recognition) etc. Optional adjustments to program flow or other requirements that fall outside the RFgen configurable options are easily implemented through our integrated VBA NET and VBA classic scripting engine – a capability that allows you to entirely step outside of the box and generate the exact form of behavior that you desire.

Depending upon your update requirements, transaction templates are created that are linked to your enterprise business objects and encapsulate the business rules necessary for the successful interaction with your enterprise system(s). Your applications are then mapped to these transactions, or alternatively, directly to the business object themselves and updates to the enterprise can then performed in real-time via the client process or in near real-time through our transaction management sub-system.

Finally, there are a number of included methods to simplify the testing phases of your data collection project. The RFgen development environment includes a mobile device emulator for quick and easy workstation testing of new applications. The RFgen integrated testing capabilities are designed for comprehensive unit testing and debugging of your applications prior to their deployment. Running on the developer’s desktop computer, the RFgen Framework’s testing environment provides targeted platform simulation, full VBA debugging capabilities including object inspectors, watch and immediate windows, as well as communication, error and performance monitoring.